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About this journal

This journal was originally to record my thoughts on collecting and building my Netherlands Wilhelm III Gold 10 Gulden Set and other projects like  my modern silver bullion NCLT sets. When it got started in the summer of 2007 I was single, in my early 20's, and working on my B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering. Starting in 2016, with my marriage and the birth of my first son, Benjamin, much of my writing has focused on raising my sons to have a love of collecting coins and exonumia and discussing how my collecting occurs in the context of my marriage and life overall.

Entries in this journal

Well, it has finally happened. The 1932 set is now #2 - and its at least partially because of the rule change.

I don't intend this as a whine or a complaint - just want that out in front - but, having seen this, I wanted to comment on it here, this being a journal and a record of my thoughts and a chronicling of my activities here. After 12 years of getting the "Best In Category" award in the 1932 mint set category, we've been bumped from the top spot in the rankings by a new set. For clarity - there has been a set that outscores us for years now (I think 5 or 6) but it has always been obscured / pr

Revenant

Revenant in Registry

Revamping the 1986 mint set and a few others too… - new pics of the '86 set are up!

When it comes to building out registry sets, I find that I'm very much one of those people that needs to "begin with the end in mind." I find that when I don't have a clear vision for a set and an idea of what the finished project will look like I have a hard time making anything I'm happy with and I have a hard time making progress or even really starting. I've been wanting to build out the 1986 mint set for over a year and I just could never come up with an idea for how to build it out th

Revenant

Revenant in Registry

NGC was fast on the plaques this year and I've completed my pair

I checked the mail Saturday, expecting to find something else and found a package from NGC that I immediately realized had to be the new award plaque. It turns out it included the coin too. We were outside with the boys and I showed the package to Shandy and she initially, seeing NGC, thought it might be the Zimbabwe and Italian coins.. somehow.  I don't know why. She's seen the boxes from NGC before when coins come back and this padded envelope looked nothing like that, but, as she p

Revenant

Revenant in Registry

The Psychology of Completion

I’m narrowing in on getting to call several on-going projects complete. My 10G set is about 80% complete if you don’t count the 1879/7 variety. My Queen’s Beast sets are getting into about that same 80% range and several of the parts / sub-series of my Zimbabwe hyperinflation set are getting to be about 85-92% complete by pick number. Most of these sets are missing only 1-3 issues before they’re 100% complete registry sets. One thing I’ve been noticing lately is that, as I narrow in on the

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Revenant in Registry

What works for the Physical Doesn't work for the Digital I guess

Well, after (finally) putting the time and the energy and cash / credit behind getting them all reholdered I had thought that a picture of the group of coins all in their matching slabs would make a good banner image for my 10G set in the new registry. While I do think the group of coins look good and I'm still happy I got them reholdered, and while I do think the images looked good, I have to admit that they fell a bit flat as banner images. I think they look great in pers

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Revenant in Registry

I'm going to have to think on this one...

For the first time in about 2 years, I’ve received a grading credit from NGC, and I’m actually faced with thinking about how I wanted to use it. A couple of years ago I knew I wanted to reholder the 10G set and I immediately saw that credit as a chance to build a graded set of Zimbabwe coins for a registry set. Last year I knew before I even finished the Zimbabwe set that the next thing I wanted to do was Venezuela – and I even went out-of-pocket on most of that because I’d already use

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Revenant in Registry

Back on Top? For Now? Oh... There's Drama!

So, I recently have been seeing some chatter on Facebook and elsewhere that CAC, no longer content to just deface PCGS and NGC slabs with oval stickers, is now going to be grading coins completely on their own, and putting them in slabs that look shockingly similar to PCGS slabs... I wonder how PCGS feels about that.  Then I come on here the other day and see the 7/24 announcement that NGC is taking away the points bonus for CAC stickered coins effective the next day. As I look on the board

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Revenant in Registry

I guess that's all over except the crying.

So, I've always thought the expression "It's all over but the crying" was a funny one, in part because when something is over people can be crying because they're happy or because they're sad. You see it on awards shows all the time with the happy cry, but, given that televised award shows are often for TV and movie stars who are, after all, professional pretenders, it does make you wonder sometimes how much of the happy crying is genuine.   What I never knew, however, but what a little bit

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Revenant in Registry

Well, that is mildly disappointing… but I have grades!

Okay, so, after several rounds of going back and forth between “Grading/Quality Control,” “Grading/Encapsulation/Imaging,” and “Quality Control/Finalized,” the submission is finally finalized and shipped, and I have grades. On a few of them, all I can say is… Woof… For Italy… While these mostly are not great I can’t call most of these disappointments. Yeah… the 1995 is lower than I’d hoped for, but the 2000 and 2001 are better than I’d worried they might be. At the end of the day

Revenant

Revenant in Registry

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